Will all Netscape plugins work in K-Meleon? Or just some? Are the plugins actually NETSCAPE plugins, or just mozilla plugins? Or is this just something that will be trial and error?


Greg

Greg,

All of the above!

Seriously, as far as we have tested, all of the plugins that work with Netscape 6 work with K-Meleon. Since Mozilla, Netscape 6 and K-Meleon share portions of the same code base, you really aren't going to see much variation in plugin support between them. What works in one should work in the others. Remember, that almost all of the plugins are produced by 3rd parties, not Mozilla or Netscape, so their behavior isn't always optimal. Sometimes you have to use a little trickey to get them to think that K-Meleon is Netscape.

If you have a particular problem with a plugin, let us know.

Andrew

To specify what has been said above, most but not all of the Netscape plugins work with K-Meleon. There are problems of two kinds: first, some plugins use very automatic installers which do not operate in the absence of Netscape (and some of them look for quite complex configuration, not only the file netscape.exe); at some sites you even cannot download a plugin unless you have Netscape (and defining K-Meleon as Netscape does not always help).

The second problem is related to specific operational questions regarding the plugins. I have tested dozens of different plugins and some of them definitely did not work. And there were some plugins that worked with problems. Some non-working plugins were MS PowerPoint, Excel and Word Viewers, B3D (Brilliant Digital), Smart Download for Netscape, RealiWeb 5.1, SVF, Squeak, Beatnik (it never agreed to install and (righteously) claimed that I don't have Netscape), MegaView etc. At least they did not work at all on my computer.

Some plugins cause illegal operations (like IPIX Viewer).

However, there are tens of plugins that work OK with K-Meleon: Flash, Shockwave, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player (partial), Adobe SVG Viewer, WebBMP, QuickTime, AlternaTIFF, MrSID, MNG Plugin, MOD Plugin, StSound Plugin, LuraWave for Netscape, DjVu, Wavelet Image Viewer, and many others.

I have already promised to upload a page describing my experience wirh plugins and shall soon do so but right now I have been tied up by lack of time.

You said, shockwave works with k-meleon. I´m not able to install it since it the installer is looking for a installed version of netscape and won´t work if it doesn´t find it. Since you are able to use it, i hope you can give me a tip how i can use it too.
peter

hi man
just download NPSWF32.dll from the net and copy to C:\progra~1\k-meleon\plugins

I think you can install Shockwave by creating a fake netscape.exe in your K-Meleon folder and then creating the following subfolders on C:\

C:\netscape\communicator\program\program\plugins\
C:\netscape\communicator\program\plugins\

and put fake netscape.exe and netsc6.exe in
C:\netscape\communicator\program\

then also make the folder
C:\netscape\navigator\program\plugins\

and then put a fake netscape.exe and netsc6.exe
also in C:\netscape

Otherwise those folders can be empty. That should be able to trick many plugin installers to actually launch themselves. You can make a fake netscape.exe by copy/rename of k-meleon.exe.

The installer will probably copy the plugin files (usually np*.dll) into one of the plugins folders you created, and you can copy the plugin dll file from there to your K-Meleon\plugins folder. If you want to experiment, just monitor those plugins folders you created.

However, if you are using Opera, you mostly need not do anything else but install the plugin and then copy the plugin files from Opera\Program\Plugins (if you have Opera you do not need to create all those folders).

Hi,
the java-plugin does not work - every time I have to install ...
it is installed and it is in both folder - kmeleon-plugins and netscape-plugins ... ?

Clodo,

What version of JRE are you installing? Remove the plugins from the K-Meleon directory. This is one time where you do not want the plugins in the K-Meleon directory.

Andrew

busco el archivo netsc6.ex uregente